"There are no atheists in the foxholes" (1942)

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Fri Jun 15 02:26:03 UTC 2007


I heard this phrase just now on a cable news network. The Yale Book of
Quotations credits William Thomas Cummings, an American priest, from Carlos R.
Romulo, _I Saw the Fall of the Philippines_ (1943).
...
...
...
20 April 1942, Albuquerque (NM) Journal, pg. 4, col. 3:
National Whirligig
News Behind the News
McClure Newspaper Syndicate
WASHINGTON
By Ray Tucker
(...)
_ADVICE._ Brigadier General William B. Arnold, Chief of Chaplains of the
Army of the United States, has received voluminous reports from the Philippines
which suggest that war may make good Christians of men instead of brutalizing
them. In all his files perhaps the best evidence of a soldier's reaction to
the  screaming, falling shadows of death is the human experience of Lieut.
Colonel  Warren Clear on Bataan.
...
The colonel, who was never a habitual churchgoer, leaped into a fox hole in
the midst of an intense bombardment from the skies. A sergeant squeezed over
to  make room. When the explosions opened the earth and ripped trees
roundabout, the  noncom prayed aloud without any shame. Soon words forgotten since
childhood came  to the officer's lips as he echoed his companion's beseechings for
divine  watchfulness. After the enemy planes had passed over, Clear remarked
more to  himself than to his companion: "We prayed?" "Yes," replied the other
quite  casually, "we did. There are no atheists in the fox holes of Bataan."




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